BETTI NUMBERS OF FINITE VOLUME ORBIFOLDS IDDO SAMET Abstract. We prove that the Betti numbers of a negatively curved orbifold are linearly bounded by its volume, generalizing a theorem of Gromov which establishes this bound for manifolds. An imme- diate corollary is that Betti numbers of a lattice in a rank-one Lie group are linearly bounded by its co-volume. 1. Introduction Let X be a Hadamard manifold, i.e. a connected, simply-connected, complete Riemannian manifold of non-positive curvature normalized such that −1 ≤ K ≤ 0. Let Γ be a discrete subgroup of Isom(X). If Γ is torsion-free then X=Γ is a Riemannian manifold. If Γ has torsion elements, then X=Γ has a structure of an orbifold. In both cases, the Riemannian structure defines the volume of X=Γ. An important special case is that of symmetric spaces X = KnG, where G is a connected semisimple Lie group without center and with no compact factors, and K is a maximal compact subgroup. Then X is non-positively curved, and G is the connected component of Isom(X). In this case, X=Γ has finite volume iff Γ is a lattice in G. The curvature of X is non-positive if rank(G) ≥ 2, and is negative if rank(G) = 1. In many cases, the volume of negatively curved manifold controls the complexity of its topology. A manifestation of this phenomenon is the celebrated theorem of Gromov [3, 10] stating that if X has sectional curvature −1 ≤ K < 0 then Xn (1) bi(X=Γ) ≤ Cn · vol(X=Γ); i=0 where bi are Betti numbers w.r.t. to coefficients in any field, and Cn is a constant depending only on n = dim(X). This inequality also holds when −1 ≤ K ≤ 0 if X is analytic and has no Euclidean factors. Date: November 2012. The research was done as part of the author's PhD at the Hebrew University un- der the supervision of Prof. Gelander and was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) grant of Prof. Gelander / grant agreement 203418. 1 BETTI NUMBERS OF FINITE VOLUME ORBIFOLDS 2 It should be noted, that since X is a K(Γ; 1), the bi's are the Betti number of the homology of the group Γ. In certain cases, volume imposes much stronger restriction on topol- ogy. Namely, it was proved by Gelander [8] that if X is a symmetric space of non-compact type and Γ is a non-uniform torsion-free arith- metic lattice then X=Γ is homotopy-equivalent to a simplicial complex whose complexity is restricted: the number of vertices in this complex is bounded by a constant (depending on X) times the volume of X=Γ, and the valence of each vertex is bounded by a constant depending only on X. This equivalence immediately implies Gromov's theorem. By Margulis's arithmeticity theorem, if rank(X) ≥ 2 then every lattice Γ is arithmetic, and thus Gelander's theorem holds for all such spaces. Gelander has also proved that if Γ torsion-free, then Γ has a presen- tation for which the number of generators and the total length of the relations is bounded linearly by the volume of X=Γ (with constants de- pending on X). Recently, Gelander [9] extended this result and proved that even for lattices with torsion, the minimal number of generators of Γ is bounded from above by a constant (depending on G) times the volume of X=Γ. In particular, this provides a linear bound to the first Betti number of Γ. The main theorem proved in this paper is a generalization of Gro- mov's theorem to the case where Γ has torsion, in other words, to orbifolds of the form X=Γ. We prove Theorem 1.1. Let X be a Hadamard manifold of dimension n with sectional curvature −1 ≤ K < 0. Then for every discrete group Γ < Isom(X), X (2) rk Hi(X=Γ;A) ≤ Cn · vol(X=Γ); i where the coefficient ring A is an integral domain of characteristic 0, and Cn is a constant depending only on n. There are several (co)-homology theories for orbifolds which aim at capturing the homology of the space, as well as that of the group Γ. Our technique is mainly geometric; we therefore treat X=Γ as a topo- logical quotient space, and the homology is that of this space. Further- more, the action of finite subgroups of Γ introduces torsion to homology groups, which may depend on the structure of these finite groups. Since we are not able to bound the size of finite groups by the orbifold vol- ume, our result is restricted to homology with coefficients in an integral domain with characteristic 0. BETTI NUMBERS OF FINITE VOLUME ORBIFOLDS 3 The case A = Q is of particular importance. The homology of the stabilizers in G of points of X is trivial, because stabilizers are finite groups. It follows that Hi(X=Γ; Q) = Hi(Γ; Q) (see e.g. [6], p. 174). Hence, we can restate (2) as a bound on Betti numbers (with rational coefficients) of the group Γ: X bi(Γ; Q) ≤ Cn · vol(X=Γ): i Theorem 1.1 and Gromov's theorem can be rephrased as an asymp- totical statement: if Γn is a sequence of groups of isometries acting discretely on X (with the appropriate assumptions) then the growth of bi(Γn) is at most linear in vol(X=Γn). A theorem of L¨uck [12] describes the asymptotic behavior of a nested sequence (Γn)n≥1 of normalT finite index subgroups of Γ, assuming that X=Γ is compact and Γn = 1. In this case, b (X=Γ ) (3) lim i n = b(2)(X; Γ); !1 i n vol(X=Γn) where the right-hand-side is the L2-Betti number. Hence, the growth (2) is linear exactly when bi (X; Γ) is non-zero. It was proved by Olbrich (2) [15] that if X is a symmetric space, then bi is zero unless, perhaps, i = dim(X)=2. In a recent joint work with Abert, Bergeron, Biringer, Gelander, Nikolov and Raimbault [1,2] we prove (3) holds for any sequence of uni- form irreducible lattices (Γn)n≥1 (possibly with torsion) in a semisimple Lie group G, assuming that vol(X=Γn) ! 1 and that G has property (T) and rank ≥ 2. However, one cannot expect (3) to hold for rank- one locally symmetric spaces (whether manifolds or orbifolds). For instance, if Γ is a uniform lattice in Isom(Hn) that surjects on the free group of rank 2, then finite index subgroups of Γ corresponding to sub- groups of Z∗Z have first Betti numbers that grow linearly with volume, (2) whereas b1 = 0. Characteristic p. It is natural to whether Theorem 1.1 holds for co- efficients with positive characteristic, and particularly for coefficients in the field Fp. The author does not know of any counterexample in this case. In fact, there is but a single place in the proof that relies on the characteristic assumption, namely Proposition 4.11. Proving this proposition for coefficients in Fp boils down to the problem of uniformly bounding the Fp-Betti numbers of a spherical orbifold, as posed in the following question: BETTI NUMBERS OF FINITE VOLUME ORBIFOLDS 4 Does there exist a constant D depending on k (and pos- sibly on p?) such that for every finite group G acting lin- k k early on a sphere S , and for every i, bi(S =G; Fp) ≤ D? More precisely, an affirmative answer to the question for spheres of dimensions ≤ n − 1 would imply that Theorem 1.1 holds with coeffi- cients in Fp for manifolds of dimension n. In particular, we can obtain the following partial results: (1) The theorem holds with Fp coefficients for manifolds of dimen- sions 2 or 3 (with a constant Cn independent of p). This is be- cause | up to homeomorphism | there are only finitely many possible quotients of 1-spheres and 2-spheres by finite groups1. (2) If p does not divide the order of any finite subgroup of Γ, then the inequality (2) holds for A = Fp (with the constant Cn of the characteristic 0 case). This follows from the fact that k bi(S =G; Fp) ≤ 1 whenever p is prime to the order of G (see remark at the end of section 4). Acknowledgments. It is my pleasure to thank Tsachik Gelander, my Ph.D. advisor, for his support, encouragement and advice. I also thank the referee for carefully reading the manuscript, and for his invaluable suggestions for improving the exposition. 2. Preliminaries 2.1. Notation. Let X be an n-dimensional Hadamard manifold, i.e. a connected, simply-connected complete Riemannian manifold of non- positive sectional curvature. We assume that the curvature is bounded and that the metric is normalized such that −1 ≤ K ≤ 0. If K < 0 we say the manifold is negatively curved. Most of our results apply to this case. 2.1.1. We introduce notation and review some facts about isometries of Hadamard spaces. A standard reference for this is [5, Ch. II.6] or [3, x6]. Let γ be an isometry of X. The displacement function dγ : X ! ≥0 R , dγ(x) = d(γx; x), is a convex function in the sense that for every geodesic c : R ! X, dγ ◦ c is a convex function. The set of minimal displacement is defined Min(γ) = fx 2 X : dγ(x) = inf dγg; 1The underlying space of a 1-dimensional spherical orbifold is 1-sphere or an interval, and the underlying space of a 2-dimensional spherical orbifold is a 2-sphere, a disc, or a projective plane.